• Friday, March 29, 2024

Comment

‘Brexit threatens skills pool’

Vince Cable

By: Sarwaralam

IMMIGRATION brings substantial benefits to the United Kingdom. It has made our country
richer, culturally as well as economically. Prime minister Theresa May does not deny this. At the first PMQs back after the summer break, she stated: “Immigration has been good for the UK.”

Yet, contrary to any evidence in the public domain, she and her party continue to perpetuate the notion that immigration has depressed wages and displaced the native workforce. It is this fallacy that drives their political demand for immigration to be reduced “to the tens of thousands”, meaning ever more punitive and irrational measures to restrict non-EU migration.

Now they wish to inflict the same bureaucracy and restraint on EU migrants, with no let-up for those coming from outside. It is a lose-lose position. There is not a shred of evidence to suggest these changes will have a positive effect on the labour market or the economy. In fact, the evidence points to the contrary. A long-term study conducted by UCL showed that European immigrants to the UK paid more in taxes than they received in benefits and were less likely than the UK population to live in social housing.

The vilification of immigrants by the Conservative Party is therefore an utter disgrace. These are students who help fund our universities; doctors and teachers who help us and our children; and entrepreneurs who help grow our economy. And their manifesto pledge to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands was at best delusional, but at worst experts have warned that trying to achieve it could cost us £6 billion.

While in government, a number of studies and reports were commissioned that showed that migrant labour complemented not competed with the migrant workforce. The fact is, with no links to one town or region, migrants are often more ready and able to follow demand and more prepared to do jobs in conditions many of us would find physically demanding. These reports were never published because Conservative colleagues and Theresa May, in particular, found the evidence did not mesh with their ambition to get migration down to the tens of thousands.

The government has made much of the distinction between skilled and unskilled labour and “hard” and “soft” skills. Bankers, engineers and footballers are welcome, but not hotel receptionists, care workers, chefs or cleaners. They make no mention, though, of where the reserve army of unemployed, unskilled Britons will come from while we have record levels of employment.

The immigration debate is in desperate need of a solid injection of evidence. We should hope for a breath of fresh air from the Migration Advisory Committee, an independent body that will examine and report back on the role that EU nationals play in the UK economy. They must be allowed to publish the evidence they find and to do so to their own timetable.

The UK, like other developed economies across the globe, faces the challenge of an ageing
population matched with growth in major cities and acute pressure on housing and public services. But self-defeating moves to artificially restrict migration to alleviate such pressures is economic madness.

That is why the Liberal Democrats are pressuring ministers to find ways to ensure that the
supply of housing, school places and medical provision in growth areas matches demand. That means the government getting involved, in particular, in building the homes that the private sector will not provide.

Successive governments have tried to scapegoat their own failures in these policy areas and the right wing press happily acts in concert with them to make immigrants the target. Such moves poison the atmosphere and give racism the green light. There can never be any excuse for hate crime or casual racism and we must work together to combat it.

While both Labour and the Conservatives pander to prejudice, Liberal Democrats will always campaign for rationality in the immigration debate. The Conservatives like to present a more diverse image these days, but nothing can disguise the fact that Britain has become a more unequal society under their governance.

We are a liberal country. Let us together make it fairer and more prosperous.

 

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